Maomao was momentarily stunned.
Faced with Aunt Ruxue's question, she chose this time to confront her true feelings:
"Aunt Ruxue, I want to stay here long-term... is that... okay?"
Lin Yu took a deep breath, silently cheering for Maomao in his heart.
For most people,
making requests to their "parents" might be an utterly trivial matter—
so insignificant it barely even counts as a request.
But Lin Yu understood just how much courage it took for Maomao to voice her true thoughts at this moment.
Or perhaps it would be better to consider courage from another angle...
From Aunt Ruxue's perspective, the one posing the question also needed immense bravery!
Ever since meeting Maomao and Aunt Ruxue, Lin Yu had pieced together their story using the information they provided and the insights from his dreams.
One had faced discrimination abroad.
The other had lost her parents after growing old enough to understand.
Two people who had endured profound emotional pain had become each other's light in their respective worlds.
The adult was learning how to love.
The child was trying to reclaim love.
No matter how you looked at it,
judging by their current relationship, the beautiful memories far outweighed the hardships.
At this moment,
the one attempting to let go must have been suffering far more than the one striving for independence.
So, Aunt Ruxue needed even greater courage than Maomao.
Du Ruxue's expression revealed neither joy nor anger as she replied calmly:
"Sure, staying long-term at Mengmeng’s place sounds like a good idea to me."
Maomao’s tense body instantly relaxed.
She finally understood what it meant to feel a weight lift off her shoulders.
"But..."
Du Ruxue’s tone shifted, making Maomao’s heart leap again.
Everything before "but" could be ignored—
what came after was the real point to remember!
As if deliberately building suspense, Du Ruxue picked up her glass, took a sip of water, and paused before speaking.
The moment she set the glass down...
it was as if a switch had been flipped...
A server who had been completely out of sight suddenly appeared like a ghost beside their table.
"Honored guests, may I refill your water?"
Without waiting for a response, the server began pouring.
Lin Yu watched with deep admiration.
"......"
"Thank you."
Once the water was poured, Du Ruxue finally continued:
"But you’ve never lived independently before. I can’t rest easy leaving you alone out here."
"If you can’t even find your way around, how can you learn to take care of yourself?"
Maomao lowered her head, her heart heavy with disappointment.
Sigh.
So even speaking her mind couldn’t change the outcome.
Aunt Ruxue’s words were undeniably true, leaving Maomao no room to argue.
Her ability to manage daily life was practically nonexistent.
Staying inside the apartment without going out would, of course, prevent any mishaps.
But Maomao asked herself...
Was what she truly wanted just moving from one big, empty house to another crowded one?
Stepping out would only mean walking into another kind of confinement.
Yet.
The conversation wasn’t over.
Du Ruxue spoke again:
"So, to make you give up completely, I prepared three challenges for you last night!"
"For the next week, I’ll stay in Pingchuan City."
"If you complete all three, it’ll prove you’re capable of living independently."
"Your request will be granted—you can stay as long as you want."
"But if you fail, you’ll come home with me without complaint."
"And for the next three years, you won’t bring up living away again."
Maomao: "!!!"
Hearing this, Maomao’s eyes instantly lit up.
There was still a chance?
It wasn’t over yet!
The direction of her future life was still in her own hands!
"Deal, Aunt Ruxue! I accept!"
Without even hearing what the challenges were, Maomao agreed immediately.
Lin Yu wasn’t entirely surprised by this outcome.
At least from yesterday’s interactions, it was clear Aunt Ruxue wasn’t entirely indifferent to Maomao’s feelings.
But this woman... she was so contradictory!
Even Lin Yu couldn’t tell whether she wanted Maomao to succeed or fail.
Maybe she didn’t even know herself.
One thing was certain, though...
Aunt Ruxue understood Maomao inside out!
Using a "competition" or "challenge" to motivate the stubbornly competitive Maomao to give it her all—
only someone who had her completely figured out could devise such a tactic.
Lin Yu took a sip from his glass, savoring the complexity of this bond that transcended a typical mother-daughter relationship.
Just then,
the familiar server materialized beside him again,
repeating the same script—and giving him a minor heart attack in the process.
Seeing Maomao’s newfound confidence, Du Ruxue scoffed:
"Maomao, don’t mistake this for kindness."
"It’s just a little game to make you face reality."
"Let’s start with the first challenge. If you pass, we’ll move to the next."
"If you can’t even clear the first one, the rest won’t matter."
Instantly,
all eyes turned to Du Ruxue.
Maomao leaned forward intently, not wanting to miss a single word.
Then,
Du Ruxue revealed the challenge:
"The first task..."
"Spend 30 million yuan within 24 hours."
"Use it to buy 'daily necessities' for yourself in Pingchuan City."
"Cars, property, designer bags, luxury watches..."
"Anything you think you’ll need over the next two years—buy whatever you want."
"The money must be spent, not saved or invested in any form!"
"If you fail to spend it all in 24 hours, the challenge is over."
Maomao: "!!!"
Chen Qimeng: "!!!"
Lin Yu: "!!!"
Now this was what you called a bombshell!
Maomao was shocked because, in all her life, she’d never spent such an astronomical sum.
Anything she needed had always been provided for her!
Figuring out what to buy and where to splurge was completely outside her experience.
Chen Qimeng was floored by her friend’s staggering wealth.
She knew Du Ruxue was rich, but this rich?
30 million yuan...
just to test a child’s growth?
This was a lifestyle she couldn’t even dream of.
As for Lin Yu, his shock stemmed from...
wanting to check Du Ruxue’s ID to see if it read "Wang Duoyu’s Second Uncle"!
30 million?
Why not make it a billion while you’re at it?!
The games of the wealthy were bafflingly consistent—and infuriating.
Why not let him try?
He’d never handled big money either,
but he’d blow through it all in a day, guaranteed!
...
(Extra chapter delivered! That’s all for today’s update. Goodnight, friends! If you have time, check out the ads—support the author with some love-powered electricity!)
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
